The Jerx Year Three
- Richard Kaufman
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Re: The Jerx Year Three
I have friends, and a spouse, and a child, and a parent, with whom I agree to disagree on certain things. That's how adults get a long.
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Re: The Jerx Year Three
Richard Kaufman wrote:I have friends, and a spouse, and a child, and a parent, with whom I agree to disagree on certain things. That's how adults get a long.
On the button.
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Re: The Jerx Year Three
Setting aside specifics of style, to those who happen to think Andy just kinda doesn't know what he's talking about, I've got you covered.
The Jerx, at one point, had a few things to say about Tommy Wonder's idea of misdirection. I'll copy and paste my humble reply below, and y'all can check out two more at the end if you're so inclined...
-----------------
"The Jerx Totally Misses Tommy Wonder’s Point On Misdirection"
Yup, the emperor definitely doesn’t have any clothes.
Here’s a long essay about how Tommy Wonder’s ideas of misdirection are bad.
Sigh…
Ok, let’s break this down. First, we’re not going to join in on this game of semantical manipulation surrounding the word “misdirection”. There’s very little point. Tommy Wonder wants to call it “direction” because he doesn’t like the idea of people looking away from something, but rather towards something. In The Secret Art of Magic Eric Evans wants to redefine “misdirection” so that it encapsulates everything that brings the spectator away from the method and towards the effect. The Jerx wants to redefine “misdirection” so that it’s all about directing their suspicion, rather than their attention. And we’ve got further confusion with terms like “time misdirection” to get away with something like the Cross Cut force, and perhaps even something like “psychological misdirection” where a mentalist shuffles the cards sloppily in order to make people think he couldn’t possibly use sleight-of-hand because he’s so inept at it.
Let’s assume terms like “time misdirection” and “psychological misdirection” are harmless because it’s pretty obvious that what they’re talking about is outside the bounds of regular “misdirection”, and so they can be left aside for this discussion. The problem with Evans’s idea is that it basically takes an industry term and tries to redefine it to talk about a broader strategical approach to deception. When I read Evans’s book, the broader strategy didn’t bother me at all, and my only concern was that it felt a bit cute to try to appropriate an existing word with an understood meaning for something else. Still, it was easy enough to accept it as a guy just playing with ideas.
That overrated hack who writes the Jerx blog is trying to do the same thing, and his efforts could be seen as similarly cute if he didn’t feel obliged to jump up and down on Tommy Wonder’s work in order to help support his point.
When you get right down to it, I mean really, we all know what misdirection is about. It’s about making sure that they’re not looking at a place where we’re doing something sneaky that we can’t otherwise cover. That’s it. There are good ways and bad ways of going about that.
The problem with trying to broaden “misdirection” as being something more than this, the way that Evans and Andy are, is that all of a sudden you’re basically talking about deception and suspicion management on a grand scale, a topic so ridiculously broad, where there are going to be many different subsets of techniques one can use, including the manipulation of what the audience is looking at. I get it, “misdirection” is a neat word, but it’s silly to look at it as being mired in the slums of “look here but not there” and in desperate need of ascension to a higher plane. That whole “look here but not there” situation is fascinating and deep and totally worthy of having its own damned word.
So, with that, we’re not going to spend too much time on what Andy’s propagandizing with regards to this: “Don’t think about misdirection as being about the direction of someone’s focus or interest. Instead, think about it as the direction of someone’s suspicion.” Magicians who aim high already know that the direction of suspicions is the name of the game, and that misdirection of attention is one of the tools we can use to win that game. There are other tools available (such as cover, patter, presentation, conditioning actions, motivated actions, feints, memory manipulation, camouflage, outs, etc.) and yet nobody’s clamoring for “cover” to be called anything other than “cover”, and so on. All this semantical diddling is answering a question that nobody posed. It’s like Hollywood putting out their Justice League movies — unnecessary nonsense that nobody really asked for.
Now, the question that magicians have long been posing is how to handle basic misdirection well. Tommy Wonder offers up some good answers, and if it’s too difficult to see how they are good answers, then a study of his routines that employ his ideas is in order. Let’s get to something that the Jerx seems to be having trouble with. He offers a hypothesis where something is written down on a card, you pull out a crystal and claim that it can be used to read minds, the crystal is held away from the card and while they’re looking at the crystal, you get a peek of the card.
This is not the sort of thing Tommy Wonder is advocating, at all. First, peeks are a bold method. You wouldn’t want to use the crystal for misdirecting the peek that directly. Rather, you’d want to use the crystal for something like misdirecting a shuttle pass of the card for a dummy, which you set off to the side, and then secretly getting the peek after. Why is this an important distinction? Because the card is still an obvious point of interest, and having it out of play means that they can relax and focus on the crystal when the performer brings their attention to it. Obviously this means that everything else in the effect has to stand up to scrutiny as well, and the cleaner the switch-out, the better.
Second, this is a mentalism routine. That might seem like an unimportant point, but a magician’s relationship to his props is different than a mentalist’s. In magic, there’s heat of the props, because that’s where magic’s going to happen. In mentalism, the props need to be psychologically invisible to give credence to the mind-reading (or whatever) to come.
This opens up new opportunities. For instance, Michael Ammar’s Cups and Balls. He produces a ball at his fingertips, and then another. For the third ball, attention is brought to his hands again, and this allows him to accomplish an open load of that final ball. His hand is an obvious point of natural interest because it’s where he was able to produce two balls already. The place where it ends up is not a point of interest because nobody sees it coming. Does the audience feel cheated by this? I can’t imagine so, unless it were rubbed in their face. Open loads tend to be powerful because they’re so bold and such an intuitive solution that most people wouldn’t think a magician would stoop so low, especially in Ammar’s case where he’s preceded that effect with two others that don’t even exist in that same playground. (It’s worth mentioning that Michael Ammar credits Wonder specifically on that sequence, and the entire thing relies on attention manipulation.)
One could argue that open loads are cheating in a way. I can understand that. You can’t compare the appearance of Michael Ammar’s third ball with something like the appearance of a signed card inside a sealed envelope inside a wallet, as the latter is undoubtedly stronger if the core technique is solid. That said, the sort of surprises you get from an open load are welcome in a magic show, and you don’t see stand-up comics dropping tags out of their initial jokes just because their closing punchline is where the “real laughs” are.
Another example might include something like Tommy Wonder’s Tamed Cards. There’s a great initial display of the Four of Clubs cards, so that when the Jack of Diamonds cards start to appear, each successive revelation is a new point of interest. If the magician doesn’t put attention on each of the Jack of Diamonds cards as they appear, then the audience misses the magic. And assuming the method’s solid, if there’s strong attention on each revelation, you now have a sort of one-ahead thing going on where each appearance can be used as misdirection away from a get-ready in the other hand.
This is another instance that shows the foolishness of the Jerx’s example. Tommy Wonder loved to talk about misdirection, but he wasn’t constantly advocating heavy misdirection such as what’s seen in the crystal-and-card-peek example. Yeah, he had some bold stuff like in his own Cups and Balls routine, but we’re also talking about making sure the audience misses you performing a thumb count, or flopping a faced deck, or repositioning a coin from a thumb palm to a finger palm, or whatnot. These minor tells can have a negative impact on the cleanliness of one’s magic, and it makes sense to find ways to misdirect away from them.
Approaching magic from this standpoint also allow you to set things up so that you can have essentially burnable magic. For instance, you misdirect during a shuttle-pass where you switch one coin for another that’s on a pull, setting you up for a vanish that’s far cleaner and more startling than most conventional methods.
Later, Andy writes… “If your attention is shifted away and then something changes: the magician knows the word you wrote down, the ball has disappeared, the card is in the magician’s pocket. Well… that’s all the explanation you need.” This presumes that Tommy Wonder is advocating having the entirety of the method be at the moment the audience isn’t looking. Again, you’re missing the point if you divorce the ideas completely from the context of the magic that he puts together and offers as examples of those ideas, especially when it’s a situation of misdirection being used in conjunction with other principles.
In the Tamed Cards, he points to his watch in order to avoid a possible discrepant moment in the count. How is that moment ever going to explain the effect of cards changing to a regular audience? Early in Deja Reverse, he produces cards from the spectator’s ear in order to face the deck. How is that moment ever going to explain how the first spectator’s card keeps turning face up later on? In the Ambitious Card, he leaves a few cards on the table as misdirection for something secret he does while squaring the deck. How is that moment ever going to explain how their card ended up in the ringbox? I’m all for giving spectators the benefit of the doubt for not being as stupid as most magicians think they are, but there’s a difference between saying spectators are smart, and giving them credit for being able to see through that level of deep deception.
Part of this misunderstanding caused by Andy’s mission to make a point seems to stem from the fact that while he was busy cherry-picking one chapter in Wonder’s book, he missed another chapter on the Three Pillars, which talks at some length about the larger issues of manipulating an audience’s psychology. The Three Pillars are manipulation, mechanics, and psychology, and it should be plainly obvious that what we’ve always called “misdirection” is essentially a subcomponent of manipulation. Wonder was never arguing that it should be the entire basis for a strategy in the way that Andy seems to think that he is. On the contrary, he made the case that often the strongest magic uses all three.
Both volumes of the Books of Wonder are great, Andy. You should try reading them all the way through sometime.
----------------------------
The Jerx comes up with a double-lift...
https://theburnabykid.com/nwmb/2018/08/ ... igs-snout/
The Jerx tries to "force" a bunch of nonsense on us...
https://theburnabykid.com/nwmb/2018/02/ ... esearcher/
The Jerx, at one point, had a few things to say about Tommy Wonder's idea of misdirection. I'll copy and paste my humble reply below, and y'all can check out two more at the end if you're so inclined...
-----------------
"The Jerx Totally Misses Tommy Wonder’s Point On Misdirection"
Yup, the emperor definitely doesn’t have any clothes.
Here’s a long essay about how Tommy Wonder’s ideas of misdirection are bad.
Sigh…
Ok, let’s break this down. First, we’re not going to join in on this game of semantical manipulation surrounding the word “misdirection”. There’s very little point. Tommy Wonder wants to call it “direction” because he doesn’t like the idea of people looking away from something, but rather towards something. In The Secret Art of Magic Eric Evans wants to redefine “misdirection” so that it encapsulates everything that brings the spectator away from the method and towards the effect. The Jerx wants to redefine “misdirection” so that it’s all about directing their suspicion, rather than their attention. And we’ve got further confusion with terms like “time misdirection” to get away with something like the Cross Cut force, and perhaps even something like “psychological misdirection” where a mentalist shuffles the cards sloppily in order to make people think he couldn’t possibly use sleight-of-hand because he’s so inept at it.
Let’s assume terms like “time misdirection” and “psychological misdirection” are harmless because it’s pretty obvious that what they’re talking about is outside the bounds of regular “misdirection”, and so they can be left aside for this discussion. The problem with Evans’s idea is that it basically takes an industry term and tries to redefine it to talk about a broader strategical approach to deception. When I read Evans’s book, the broader strategy didn’t bother me at all, and my only concern was that it felt a bit cute to try to appropriate an existing word with an understood meaning for something else. Still, it was easy enough to accept it as a guy just playing with ideas.
That overrated hack who writes the Jerx blog is trying to do the same thing, and his efforts could be seen as similarly cute if he didn’t feel obliged to jump up and down on Tommy Wonder’s work in order to help support his point.
When you get right down to it, I mean really, we all know what misdirection is about. It’s about making sure that they’re not looking at a place where we’re doing something sneaky that we can’t otherwise cover. That’s it. There are good ways and bad ways of going about that.
The problem with trying to broaden “misdirection” as being something more than this, the way that Evans and Andy are, is that all of a sudden you’re basically talking about deception and suspicion management on a grand scale, a topic so ridiculously broad, where there are going to be many different subsets of techniques one can use, including the manipulation of what the audience is looking at. I get it, “misdirection” is a neat word, but it’s silly to look at it as being mired in the slums of “look here but not there” and in desperate need of ascension to a higher plane. That whole “look here but not there” situation is fascinating and deep and totally worthy of having its own damned word.
So, with that, we’re not going to spend too much time on what Andy’s propagandizing with regards to this: “Don’t think about misdirection as being about the direction of someone’s focus or interest. Instead, think about it as the direction of someone’s suspicion.” Magicians who aim high already know that the direction of suspicions is the name of the game, and that misdirection of attention is one of the tools we can use to win that game. There are other tools available (such as cover, patter, presentation, conditioning actions, motivated actions, feints, memory manipulation, camouflage, outs, etc.) and yet nobody’s clamoring for “cover” to be called anything other than “cover”, and so on. All this semantical diddling is answering a question that nobody posed. It’s like Hollywood putting out their Justice League movies — unnecessary nonsense that nobody really asked for.
Now, the question that magicians have long been posing is how to handle basic misdirection well. Tommy Wonder offers up some good answers, and if it’s too difficult to see how they are good answers, then a study of his routines that employ his ideas is in order. Let’s get to something that the Jerx seems to be having trouble with. He offers a hypothesis where something is written down on a card, you pull out a crystal and claim that it can be used to read minds, the crystal is held away from the card and while they’re looking at the crystal, you get a peek of the card.
This is not the sort of thing Tommy Wonder is advocating, at all. First, peeks are a bold method. You wouldn’t want to use the crystal for misdirecting the peek that directly. Rather, you’d want to use the crystal for something like misdirecting a shuttle pass of the card for a dummy, which you set off to the side, and then secretly getting the peek after. Why is this an important distinction? Because the card is still an obvious point of interest, and having it out of play means that they can relax and focus on the crystal when the performer brings their attention to it. Obviously this means that everything else in the effect has to stand up to scrutiny as well, and the cleaner the switch-out, the better.
Second, this is a mentalism routine. That might seem like an unimportant point, but a magician’s relationship to his props is different than a mentalist’s. In magic, there’s heat of the props, because that’s where magic’s going to happen. In mentalism, the props need to be psychologically invisible to give credence to the mind-reading (or whatever) to come.
This opens up new opportunities. For instance, Michael Ammar’s Cups and Balls. He produces a ball at his fingertips, and then another. For the third ball, attention is brought to his hands again, and this allows him to accomplish an open load of that final ball. His hand is an obvious point of natural interest because it’s where he was able to produce two balls already. The place where it ends up is not a point of interest because nobody sees it coming. Does the audience feel cheated by this? I can’t imagine so, unless it were rubbed in their face. Open loads tend to be powerful because they’re so bold and such an intuitive solution that most people wouldn’t think a magician would stoop so low, especially in Ammar’s case where he’s preceded that effect with two others that don’t even exist in that same playground. (It’s worth mentioning that Michael Ammar credits Wonder specifically on that sequence, and the entire thing relies on attention manipulation.)
One could argue that open loads are cheating in a way. I can understand that. You can’t compare the appearance of Michael Ammar’s third ball with something like the appearance of a signed card inside a sealed envelope inside a wallet, as the latter is undoubtedly stronger if the core technique is solid. That said, the sort of surprises you get from an open load are welcome in a magic show, and you don’t see stand-up comics dropping tags out of their initial jokes just because their closing punchline is where the “real laughs” are.
Another example might include something like Tommy Wonder’s Tamed Cards. There’s a great initial display of the Four of Clubs cards, so that when the Jack of Diamonds cards start to appear, each successive revelation is a new point of interest. If the magician doesn’t put attention on each of the Jack of Diamonds cards as they appear, then the audience misses the magic. And assuming the method’s solid, if there’s strong attention on each revelation, you now have a sort of one-ahead thing going on where each appearance can be used as misdirection away from a get-ready in the other hand.
This is another instance that shows the foolishness of the Jerx’s example. Tommy Wonder loved to talk about misdirection, but he wasn’t constantly advocating heavy misdirection such as what’s seen in the crystal-and-card-peek example. Yeah, he had some bold stuff like in his own Cups and Balls routine, but we’re also talking about making sure the audience misses you performing a thumb count, or flopping a faced deck, or repositioning a coin from a thumb palm to a finger palm, or whatnot. These minor tells can have a negative impact on the cleanliness of one’s magic, and it makes sense to find ways to misdirect away from them.
Approaching magic from this standpoint also allow you to set things up so that you can have essentially burnable magic. For instance, you misdirect during a shuttle-pass where you switch one coin for another that’s on a pull, setting you up for a vanish that’s far cleaner and more startling than most conventional methods.
Later, Andy writes… “If your attention is shifted away and then something changes: the magician knows the word you wrote down, the ball has disappeared, the card is in the magician’s pocket. Well… that’s all the explanation you need.” This presumes that Tommy Wonder is advocating having the entirety of the method be at the moment the audience isn’t looking. Again, you’re missing the point if you divorce the ideas completely from the context of the magic that he puts together and offers as examples of those ideas, especially when it’s a situation of misdirection being used in conjunction with other principles.
In the Tamed Cards, he points to his watch in order to avoid a possible discrepant moment in the count. How is that moment ever going to explain the effect of cards changing to a regular audience? Early in Deja Reverse, he produces cards from the spectator’s ear in order to face the deck. How is that moment ever going to explain how the first spectator’s card keeps turning face up later on? In the Ambitious Card, he leaves a few cards on the table as misdirection for something secret he does while squaring the deck. How is that moment ever going to explain how their card ended up in the ringbox? I’m all for giving spectators the benefit of the doubt for not being as stupid as most magicians think they are, but there’s a difference between saying spectators are smart, and giving them credit for being able to see through that level of deep deception.
Part of this misunderstanding caused by Andy’s mission to make a point seems to stem from the fact that while he was busy cherry-picking one chapter in Wonder’s book, he missed another chapter on the Three Pillars, which talks at some length about the larger issues of manipulating an audience’s psychology. The Three Pillars are manipulation, mechanics, and psychology, and it should be plainly obvious that what we’ve always called “misdirection” is essentially a subcomponent of manipulation. Wonder was never arguing that it should be the entire basis for a strategy in the way that Andy seems to think that he is. On the contrary, he made the case that often the strongest magic uses all three.
Both volumes of the Books of Wonder are great, Andy. You should try reading them all the way through sometime.
----------------------------
The Jerx comes up with a double-lift...
https://theburnabykid.com/nwmb/2018/08/ ... igs-snout/
The Jerx tries to "force" a bunch of nonsense on us...
https://theburnabykid.com/nwmb/2018/02/ ... esearcher/
JACK, the Jolly Almanac of Card Knavery, a free beginner's resource for card magic.
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Re: The Jerx Year Three
And THAT is how you kill a conversation!
JACK, the Jolly Almanac of Card Knavery, a free beginner's resource for card magic.
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Re: The Jerx Year Three
So you're saying Tommy Wonder's Tamed Card is a better example of how to bring magic into the moment. And there are better ways to fill the gaps of a discussion than r-rated digressions. Especially those referencing mysogeny or abuse.
Also misdirection deserves a seperate discussion. Something more than what to do so they don't notice what you are doing.
Andy accepts feedback through the Jerx site. Let's see what he says.
Also misdirection deserves a seperate discussion. Something more than what to do so they don't notice what you are doing.
Andy accepts feedback through the Jerx site. Let's see what he says.
Mundus vult decipi -per Caleb Carr's story Killing Time
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Re: The Jerx Year Three
Not exactly. The instance of misdirection in the beginning of Tamed Cards is a better example of what Tommy Wonder is talking about when he's talking about misdirection.
Regarding the r-rated stuff... Some people like a sharp mustard. I don't think there's anything wrong with that. Personally, though, I think we should spend less time on the mustard and more on the hot dog. The Jerx doesn't care if people don't like his language. He's said as much on the blog, and at this point it's a draw more than a repellent, so criticizing him on that basis serves no purpose. Better still to point out the shaky foundations of the arguments themselves. Then no amount of mustard can hide the fact that the long brown thing in the bun isn't a hot dog, if you know what I'm saying.
Regarding the r-rated stuff... Some people like a sharp mustard. I don't think there's anything wrong with that. Personally, though, I think we should spend less time on the mustard and more on the hot dog. The Jerx doesn't care if people don't like his language. He's said as much on the blog, and at this point it's a draw more than a repellent, so criticizing him on that basis serves no purpose. Better still to point out the shaky foundations of the arguments themselves. Then no amount of mustard can hide the fact that the long brown thing in the bun isn't a hot dog, if you know what I'm saying.
JACK, the Jolly Almanac of Card Knavery, a free beginner's resource for card magic.
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Re: The Jerx Year Three
The Burnaby Kid wrote:And THAT is how you kill a conversation!
Seemingly!
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Re: The Jerx Year Three
This is a test of the emergency spelling assistance system:
M-I-S-O-G-Y-N-Y: Misogyny.
Thank you.
We now return you to your regularly scheduled argument.
M-I-S-O-G-Y-N-Y: Misogyny.
Thank you.
We now return you to your regularly scheduled argument.
Re: The Jerx Year Three
Ted M wrote:This is a test of the emergency spelling assistance system:
M-I-S-O-G-Y-N-Y: Misogyny.
Thank you.
We now return you to your regularly scheduled argument.
Thanks Ted.
It was bothering me but I didn’t want to be labeled a malorthographobe.
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Re: The Jerx Year Three
Joe Lyons wrote:Ted M wrote:This is a test of the emergency spelling assistance system:
M-I-S-O-G-Y-N-Y: Misogyny.
Thank you.
We now return you to your regularly scheduled argument.
Thanks Ted.
It was bothering me but I didn’t want to be labeled a malorthographobe.
Gesundheit.
JACK, the Jolly Almanac of Card Knavery, a free beginner's resource for card magic.
Re: The Jerx Year Three
Andrew wrote:
"Regarding the r-rated stuff"
- my kids watch R-rated stuff, this stuff is beyond x-rated.
"Some people like a sharp mustard."
- Equating the use of verbal, physical abuse and objectification of women to present magic, as an acquired taste , like a sharp mustard, is in equally poor taste.
"I think we should spend less time on the mustard"
- As do all too many men. Even in 2019. How very sad.
"The Jerx doesn't care if people don't like his language. He's said as much on the blog, "
- I couldn't care less whether he cares or not. Neither does my wife nor my daughters.
"...at this point it is more of a draw..."
- what truly sad commentary on our fraternity as a whole.
"criticizing him on that basis serves no purpose."
- it serves a greater purpose than any magic effect
ever could.
P.s. I thoroughly enjoyed your previous post about misdirection.
"Regarding the r-rated stuff"
- my kids watch R-rated stuff, this stuff is beyond x-rated.
"Some people like a sharp mustard."
- Equating the use of verbal, physical abuse and objectification of women to present magic, as an acquired taste , like a sharp mustard, is in equally poor taste.
"I think we should spend less time on the mustard"
- As do all too many men. Even in 2019. How very sad.
"The Jerx doesn't care if people don't like his language. He's said as much on the blog, "
- I couldn't care less whether he cares or not. Neither does my wife nor my daughters.
"...at this point it is more of a draw..."
- what truly sad commentary on our fraternity as a whole.
"criticizing him on that basis serves no purpose."
- it serves a greater purpose than any magic effect
ever could.
P.s. I thoroughly enjoyed your previous post about misdirection.
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Re: The Jerx Year Three
It's okay to talk to the author if you disagree with a notion or argument or reference. The larger topic is how we treat each other. Must it be the flower or the fertilizer? If it reads as disrespectful call it out as abusive. Maybe we can call that the "A" word till folks get comfortable looking at "or else what" transactions. Outside of magic we can talk about things which make us look unpleasant to others. Such goes by various names these days including institutional violence, expected accommodations, and traditions .
Now back to fussing over an overhand version of the Elmsley Count versus a handling Bob Farmer's Spiritu Count. Old habits etc.
That's censure not censor. When the content is not coming from authority and its words not demanded upon pain of punishment it's more productive to put (your) time and attention, money and recommendations where (your) values are respected. Free speech and free association, please....and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure. Now this overdone or come tardy off, though it make the unskillful laugh, cannot but make the judicious grieve, the censure of the which one must in your allowance o'erweigh a whole theatre of others.
Now back to fussing over an overhand version of the Elmsley Count versus a handling Bob Farmer's Spiritu Count. Old habits etc.
Last edited by Jonathan Townsend on January 27th, 2019, 11:15 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Mundus vult decipi -per Caleb Carr's story Killing Time
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Re: The Jerx Year Three
magicfish wrote:"Some people like a sharp mustard."
- Equating the use of verbal, physical abuse and objectification of women to present magic, as an acquired taste , like a sharp mustard, is in equally poor taste.
Ah, man? Now you're going to make me lose sleep tonight. Fiddlesticks.
It's possible to enjoy Silence of the Lambs while still being against kidnapping, murder, and cannibalism. In case my point's not clear, you're conflating his jokes with reality.
Look, if you really feel that jokes in poor taste are so awful... why not go after Eric Mead, Penn and Teller, The Amazing Jonathan, and Jay Marshall? These magicians were all on the Aristocrats, they all have way more influence than Andy, more people have seen the film itself than have read Andy's blog, and the material in that film makes Andy's blog seem like Sunday School material.
If nothing else, attacking the arguments Andy makes on its merits has a better chance of putting him in his place, because he looks upon people who dislike his x-rated stuff as being prudes he's happy to not cater to in the first place.
(And thanks for the reminder of the difference between r-rated and x-rated. I was never all that interested in the metrics of censorship, so the difference slipped my mind.)
JACK, the Jolly Almanac of Card Knavery, a free beginner's resource for card magic.
Re: The Jerx Year Three
The Burnaby Kid wrote:magicfish wrote:"Some people like a sharp mustard."
- Equating the use of verbal, physical abuse and objectification of women to present magic, as an acquired taste , like a sharp mustard, is in equally poor taste.
Ah, man? Now you're going to make me lose sleep tonight. Fiddlesticks.
It's possible to enjoy Silence of the Lambs while still being against kidnapping, murder, and cannibalism. In case my point's not clear, you're conflating his jokes with reality.
Look, if you really feel that jokes in poor taste are so awful... why not go after Eric Mead, Penn and Teller, The Amazing Jonathan, and Jay Marshall? These magicians were all on the Aristocrats, they all have way more influence than Andy, more people have seen the film itself than have read Andy's blog, and the material in that film makes Andy's blog seem like Sunday School material.
If nothing else, attacking the arguments Andy makes on its merits has a better chance of putting him in his place, because he looks upon people who dislike his x-rated stuff as being prudes he's happy to not cater to in the first place.
(And thanks for the reminder of the difference between r-rated and x-rated. I was never all that interested in the metrics of censorship, so the difference slipped my mind.)
Jokes? No. Certain things arent funny. See Michael Richards' last stand up routine.
Anyway all that aside,
If you can do one thing for me, just please, for the love of Odin please, don't ever mention Jay Marshall in the same breath as an anonymous gutter-snipe who profits from the misappropriation of one of the greatest publications in the history of our art by Theo Annemann and fills it with filth.
Lefty would not have approved.
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Re: The Jerx Year Three
magicfish wrote:If you can do one thing for me, just please, for the love of Odin please, don't ever mention Jay Marshall in the same breath as an anonymous gutter-snipe who profits from the misappropriation of one of the greatest publications in the history of our art by Theo Annemann and fills it with filth.
Ouch. That's a pretty harsh review of Tangled Web and its author.
JACK, the Jolly Almanac of Card Knavery, a free beginner's resource for card magic.
Re: The Jerx Year Three
The Burnaby Kid wrote:magicfish wrote:If you can do one thing for me, just please, for the love of Odin please, don't ever mention Jay Marshall in the same breath as an anonymous gutter-snipe who profits from the misappropriation of one of the greatest publications in the history of our art by Theo Annemann and fills it with filth.
Ouch. That's a pretty harsh review of Tangled Web and its author.
I have everything by Annemann. I don't think he has one called Tangled Web.
Meh, gotta work on my comedy.
Sigh. Maybe I should start cussin' , boy that'll really draw them in! Ya that's it, I haven't read the books of wonder, I'll steal from annemann, I'll denounce the pros whilst remaining anonymous and I'll appeal to the least intelligent among them with smut.
Yes that's it. I can hear them tittering now as they write their checks to my mom's p.o. box.
Re: The Jerx Year Three
I'll make it so nouveau even Swiss and Ben will be scared to give me a poor review.
Off to Chuck E Cheese for more scientific data on the Kennedy Center fellas, Its on me tonight!
Off to Chuck E Cheese for more scientific data on the Kennedy Center fellas, Its on me tonight!
Last edited by magicfish on January 28th, 2019, 12:09 am, edited 1 time in total.
Re: The Jerx Year Three
Nah bro, you guys go ahead, Imastick around and smash the Charlie Miller Pinata for the Bloggers to ponder and comment on. They'll think I know the real work. Ahem, C-ck B-lls...We're Streaking!
How's my shock value? Have I won at least Townsend yet. ?
The others are low hanging fruit.
Love you Jonathon.
I feel I must now invoke a blessing from the Rev. Mark Lewis. If his name has not since become unmentionable here. In which case I renounce him.
G'night fellas.
How's my shock value? Have I won at least Townsend yet. ?
The others are low hanging fruit.
Love you Jonathon.
I feel I must now invoke a blessing from the Rev. Mark Lewis. If his name has not since become unmentionable here. In which case I renounce him.
G'night fellas.
- Brad Jeffers
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Re: The Jerx Year Three
I'm kind of surprised that no one has outed Andy's identity.magicfish wrote: whilst remaining anonymous
Maybe no one knows who he is.
Maybe no one cares.
Perhaps in 100 years there will be a book entitled "The Man Who Was Andy", and a 200 page thread on the Genii Forum simply entitled - ANDY.
But then again, in 100 years there will probably be no Genii Forum ...
Or books.
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Re: The Jerx Year Three
magicfish wrote:Jokes? No. Certain things arent funny.
You say that as if there was a bright objective line, and things on one side of it are funny, and things on the other side aren't. Comedy doesn't work that way. De gustibus non est disputandum.
I was at MagiFest last weekend. There was a certain amount of controversy over some pedophilia jokes by Harrison Greenbaum. Some folks thought they were offensive, some thought they were funny. Here's the thing - they both were right. It's a floor wax and a dessert topping!
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Re: The Jerx Year Three
Brad Jeffers wrote:I'm kind of surprised that no one has outed Andy's identity.
I think I've figured it out... magicfish is Andy. Just stirring up trouble, and sitting back laughing.
Re: The Jerx Year Three
Or maybe Andy is Erdnase….
Andy, Andrew, Andrews, the clues begin.
Andy, Andrew, Andrews, the clues begin.
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Re: The Jerx Year Three
So, what do you think of his latest book?
Mundus vult decipi -per Caleb Carr's story Killing Time
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Re: The Jerx Year Three
The book is the best magic book I've read.
He was totally wrong about Tommy Wonder.
Both things can be true.
He was totally wrong about Tommy Wonder.
Both things can be true.
Click here to get Gerald Deutsch's Perverse Magic: The First Sixteen Years
All proceeds to Open Heart Magic charity.
All proceeds to Open Heart Magic charity.
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Re: The Jerx Year Three
Derren Brown gives Andy a shout-out here.
http://discourseinmagic.com/be-human-with-derren-brown/
Go to the 55 mins 50 secs mark. It comes about a minute after that. I just wanted to link to that part so you can hear the wider context to the point that Derren was making.
http://discourseinmagic.com/be-human-with-derren-brown/
Go to the 55 mins 50 secs mark. It comes about a minute after that. I just wanted to link to that part so you can hear the wider context to the point that Derren was making.
- Richard Kaufman
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Re: The Jerx Year Three
Derren is definitely referring to Andy Jerx (as well as Andy Nyman).
Re: The Jerx Year Three
He does refer to Andy Nyman at that point, but he also explicitly says Andy from The Jerx.
Hmmm.
Derren works with Andy Nyman and with Andrew O’Connor and seems to be a fan of Andy Jerx.
Andy Jerx’s name is Andy, he works with a guy named Andrew Costello and he always says how Derren Brown is his favorite performer.
Yehuda
Hmmm.
Derren works with Andy Nyman and with Andrew O’Connor and seems to be a fan of Andy Jerx.
Andy Jerx’s name is Andy, he works with a guy named Andrew Costello and he always says how Derren Brown is his favorite performer.
Yehuda
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Re: The Jerx Year Three
I linked to the part in the conversation where Derren discusses why he no longer performs tricks for friends in social situations. That leads into a conversation about Andy Nyman that ends with Derren giving a shout-out to Andy (from The Jerx).
Andy (from The Jerx) & Andy Nyman are two different people.
It is an unfortunate coincidence that the part I link to is Derren talking about Andy Nyman - it is just that I wanted Derren's comments about Andy (from The Jerx) put in their proper context so you can understand the context in which Derren is praising Andy (from The Jerx).
Derren praises Andy's latest book as being, "phenomenal".
Andy (from The Jerx) & Andy Nyman are two different people.
It is an unfortunate coincidence that the part I link to is Derren talking about Andy Nyman - it is just that I wanted Derren's comments about Andy (from The Jerx) put in their proper context so you can understand the context in which Derren is praising Andy (from The Jerx).
Derren praises Andy's latest book as being, "phenomenal".
Re: The Jerx Year Three
What was the title of Andy’s last book?
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Re: The Jerx Year Three
It was called Thinking of You. It is the third book that he has released.
I think of it as his fourth book since one year he had a monthly magazine called JAMM for 12 months. And when you printed and bound all the issues that added up to a books worth of great material as well.
He has another book out later this year.
All his stuff is sold-out. But if you become a regular reader of his blog there is usually one day a year where he will mention that he has some spare copies (usually these are print over runs) of his latest book for sale on a "first come first serve" basis.
http://www.thejerx.com/
There is a ton of great stuff spread throughout his blog as well. And his books often cover ideas that first appeared on the blog (along with lots of new tricks).
I did a quick overview of Andy's work a few years ago. It is now wildly out of date but it is still a useful starting point.
https://jackshalom.net/2016/11/12/quirx-of-the-jerx/
The review I did of his first book is another useful place to start as well:
https://forums.geniimagazine.com/viewtopic.php?t=48843
I think of it as his fourth book since one year he had a monthly magazine called JAMM for 12 months. And when you printed and bound all the issues that added up to a books worth of great material as well.
He has another book out later this year.
All his stuff is sold-out. But if you become a regular reader of his blog there is usually one day a year where he will mention that he has some spare copies (usually these are print over runs) of his latest book for sale on a "first come first serve" basis.
http://www.thejerx.com/
There is a ton of great stuff spread throughout his blog as well. And his books often cover ideas that first appeared on the blog (along with lots of new tricks).
I did a quick overview of Andy's work a few years ago. It is now wildly out of date but it is still a useful starting point.
https://jackshalom.net/2016/11/12/quirx-of-the-jerx/
The review I did of his first book is another useful place to start as well:
https://forums.geniimagazine.com/viewtopic.php?t=48843
Re: The Jerx Year Three
I think as more about "Andy" becomes known, it becomes apparent that he is quite involved in magic and mentalism, and further that he's no lightweight on either topic.
You may disagree profoundly with his writing style, but it would be a mistake to dismiss his deeper thinking on the subject matter.
I think his readers (fans?) who have been generally receptive to The Jerx since the beginning had already parsed that "Andy" knows of what he speaks, but of note too is that he has also established a solid track record in terms of web publishing, book publishing, and newsletter publishing.
He's not just some hacker throwing crap against the wall, he's a knowledgable magician with a proven track record, and a unique writing style that is (apparently) difficult for some readers to cosy up to.
You may disagree profoundly with his writing style, but it would be a mistake to dismiss his deeper thinking on the subject matter.
I think his readers (fans?) who have been generally receptive to The Jerx since the beginning had already parsed that "Andy" knows of what he speaks, but of note too is that he has also established a solid track record in terms of web publishing, book publishing, and newsletter publishing.
He's not just some hacker throwing crap against the wall, he's a knowledgable magician with a proven track record, and a unique writing style that is (apparently) difficult for some readers to cosy up to.
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Re: The Jerx Year Three
Richard Kaufman wrote:Okay, so who is he?
X.R. Ejydna
- Richard Kaufman
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Re: The Jerx Year Three
An anagram of "E. S. Andrews"
- Richard Kaufman
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Re: The Jerx Year Three
Richard Kaufman wrote:And so who is "Andy"?
"Andy" has `outed' his identity in two recent posts on his blog. Scroll down and watch his video here:
The Jerx Revealed (May 24, 2020)
Also don't miss the follow-up video here:
So Here's Something I Never Thought I'd Need To Say (May 25, 2020)
They are both very short videos, and well worth a look.
- Richard Kaufman
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Re: The Jerx Year Three
Already covered in another thread ... somewhere on here.
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